Ever since my encounter with Bruno's 'Atlas of Emotion' and Madeleine de Scudery's map of tenderness, I have been thinking about what it would mean to develop an interactive map of affect for characters in fiction and how such a map could be adapted for visual texts. For this practicum,  I decided to stick to the first level - developing such a map for a fictional character. The character is Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan who is on a secret mission by the prince of the Chola empire to send a message to the crown prince about a conspiracy against the empire. His journey takes him through various parts of the empire - to Sri Lanka and back. It is embellished with lavish descriptions of the coastal ecosystem of that time and since is based on much research by the author (Kalki Krishnamurthy), gives an authentic account of the land and empire. A map of affect, I thought would include the rich descriptions of the kingdom then and if over-layed with a present map, could show ecological and cartographic differences. 

I was inspired by Mapping the Golden Age of Venice and Captain Cook's fist voyage around the world. I liked the detail in the first and the movement and interactivity in the second. I envisioned creating a linear journey of our hero on such a descriptive map with dramatic movements that marked his move from one place to another (I particularly liked the movements allowed by Prezi -it could zoom in and 'go into' a map). The nature of the encounter and the prevalent mood in each location would be (naturally) colour coded. This 'map' could then be inserted into Chronozoom and it would show the period it was set in and maybe also other events around the same time.

Well, that was the grand plan. Many sign-ups, demos and experiments later, I settled for a skeletal version created on google maps. It lacks the affect (though I do like the texture the dots of the trail add to the map), the movement and the description. It has only the physical movement from one location to another.